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Douze Études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op 39

Introduction

After the setback when he failed to gain the post of professor of piano at the Paris Conservatoire as Zimmerman’s successor, Alkan again began to withdraw more and more from public life. In 1857, Richault brought out an entire collection of exceptional works which included Alkan’s magnum opus, the twelve Etudes dans tous les tons mineurs, Op 39, dedicated to the Belgian musicologist François-Joseph Fétis, who wrote: ‘this work is a real epic for the piano’. The huge collection sums up all the composer’s pianistic and compositional daring and it comprises some of his most famous works, none more so, perhaps, than Le Festin d’Esope, a set of variations which completes the cycle. We find here the famous Concerto for solo piano, of which the first movement alone is one of the great monuments of the piano repertoire, and the Symphony for solo piano, which constitutes studies 4 to 7 and is written on a far more ‘reasonable’ scale.

The lack of cohesion which might result from the progressive tonality of its four movements is compensated for by the many skilfully concealed, interrelated themes, all examined in great detail by several writers, among them being Larry Sitsky and Ronald Smith. One could discuss ad infinitum the orchestral quality of pianistic writing, particularly in the case of composers like Alkan and Liszt who, moreover, made numerous successful transcriptions. Harold Truscott seems to sum up the matter very well in saying that what one labels ‘orchestral’ within piano music is most often ‘pianistic’ writing of great quality applied to a work of huge dimensions which on further investigation turns out to be extremely difficult to orchestrate.

Jose Vianna da Motta found just the right words to describe the vast first movement of this symphony: ‘Alkan demonstrates his brilliant understanding of this form in the first movement of the Symphony (the fourth Study). The structure of the piece is as perfect, and its proportions as harmonious, as those of a movement in a symphony by Mendelssohn, but the whole is dominated by a deeply passionate mood. The tonalities are so carefully calculated and developed that anyone listening to it can relate each note to an orchestral sound; and yet it is not just through the sonority that the orchestra is painted and becomes tangible, but equally through the style and the way that the polyphony is handled. The very art of composition is transformed in this work’.

The second movement consists of a Funeral March in F minor, rather Mahlerian in style. In the original edition the title page read ‘Symphonie: No 2. Marcia funebre sulla morte d’un Uomo da bene’, words which have sadly been lost in all subsequent editions. Of course one is reminded of the subtitle of the ‘Marcia funebre’ in Beethoven’s third symphony. But might we not regard this ‘uomo da bene’ as Alkan’s father, Alkan Morhange, who died in 1855, two years before these studies were published?

The Minuet in B flat minor is in fact a scherzo that anticipates shades of Bruckner—full of energy and brightened by a lyrical trio. The final Presto in E flat minor, memorably described by Raymond Lewenthal as a ‘ride in hell’, brings the work to a breathless close.

The Symphony does not contain the excesses of the Concerto or the Grande Sonate. But, rather like the Sonatine Op 61, it proves that Alkan was also capable of writing perfectly balanced and almost ‘Classical’ works.

Recordings

'Marc-André Hamelin puts us further in his debt with another superbly played disc of Alkan … [the Symphony’s] big-boned, exorbitantly taxing writ ...'Hamelin has no equal as an interpreter of Alkan; he inhabits the overheated world of this strange proto-Lisztian figure with a completeness that comb ...» More

'A performance of the Concerto of such brilliance and lucidity that one can only listen in awe and amazement. Scaling even the most ferocious hurdles ...'This intelligent and magnificently-played programme, displaying contrasting sides of the composer's personality … The Concerto is an engrossing ...» More

The development of the piano in the early nineteenth century ran hand-in-hand with technical advances. A great number of études were published aimed at specific areas of technique, most of them devoid of musical merit until the collections by Moscheles (1827) and Chopin (1833 and 1837) carried the genre into the realm of poetry. Liszt developed this further with his Études d’exécution transcendante, published—after several revisions—in 1851; these twelve studies were more extended, of far greater technical difficulty and demanded huge reserves of physical stamina when played in concert.

Three years earlier, Alkan had published in two volumes his Douze études dans tous les tons majeurs, Op 35. Starting in A major and moving up in a logical progression of fourths (A, D, G etc.), they are of a similar length and scope to Liszt’s Études. In 1857 came the companion to Op 35, following a similar cycle of fourths: Douze études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op 39. Here the pianistic stakes are raised—considerably. Indeed, Ronald Smith, that indefatigable champion of Alkan, suggests that the very term ‘étude’ must seem singularly inappropriate, ‘that is until one considers these works as studies in the translation of orchestral sonorities into their pianistic counterpart’. These twelve studies span 277 pages and contain some of the most uncompromising writing in the entire literature of the piano, ‘our only remaining evidence,’ says Smith, ‘of a technique that caused even Liszt to feel uneasy when playing in Alkan’s presence’.

The first three studies (Comme le vent, En rythme molossique and Scherzo diabolico) are followed by the four that comprise the Symphony for solo piano (recorded by Mr Hamelin on Hyperion CDA67218). Studies 8, 9 and 10 are grouped together as the Concerto for solo piano, a work that is, on one level at least, the pianist’s ultimate calling card. The set concludes with the rarely heard Ouverture, the second longest of the studies, and No 12, Le festin d’Ésope (The Feast of Aesop), the best known of Alkan’s works (also recorded by Mr Hamelin, on Hyperion CDA66794).

The first movement of the Concerto is a colossal 72 pages in length, its 1,343 bars making it longer than Beethoven’s entire ‘Hammerklavier’ sonata. It takes just under half an hour to perform. Alkan casts the movement in the unfamiliar key of G sharp minor, with frequent excursions into the relative major (B), maintaining the same five sharps of the key signature despite a plethora of accidentals throughout indicating passages in remoter keys, until five pages before the end when he modulates triumphantly into the four flats of the tonic major (A flat). To help underline that this is a concerto (and not a symphony, sonata or fantasy), Alkan indicates ‘tutti’ and ‘solo’ passages which generally, but not always, indicate sonorous orchestral textures contrasted with more lyrical pianistic ones. The petulant opening subject, for example, is marked ‘tutti’ and ‘quasi-trombe’. For such a gargantuan movement, a route map is in order with approximate timings:

After this epic roller-coaster ride, the succeeding movements are relatively straightforward in structure, though few pages allow any resting on pianistic laurels. Moving upwards in Alkan’s tidy-minded sequence of fourths, the second movement in C sharp minor (Adagio) begins like its predecessor with an orchestral hint: ‘quasi-celli’. The ‘soloist’ enters (0'40) with the mournful initial idea followed at 3'48 by the second subject. All seems set for a reassuring time with writing that could at one moment be by Chopin at another by Liszt. But the ever-resourceful Alkan is always ready to unsettle those expecting a conventional journey. Sardonic punctuations and unlikely modulations hint at something darker to come. And indeed the storm clouds quickly gather, leading (who would have anticipated it?) to the stark drum beats of a funeral march (6'40). After a calming passage in D flat major (7'59), we return to the opening lament now underpinned by rumbling thunder. Distant drum beats again. The opening cello theme. Everything dying away to nothing—except for one last spiteful jab.

The Concerto’s third movement (logically keyed in F sharp minor) is marked Allegretto alla barbaresca. Immediately, we are flung into a feverish brew of conflicting ideas—an initial flourish that sounds like the Rakoczy March, a polonaise lasting a mere eight bars, followed by a ‘tutti’ marked ‘quasi-ribeche’ (the rebec is an early stringed instrument played with a bow that originated in Arabia). We might be in the souks of Cairo. This brief and brutal paragraph, one that must have shocked Alkan’s early listeners, leads to an extended ‘solo’ section of scintillating Parisian delicacy. So within the space of two pages we visit Hungary, Poland, Egypt and France. The nine minutes of music that follow are among the most thrilling and relentlessly taxing ever written for the piano. Op 39 No 10 is one of the great pianistic high-wire acts that should have you on the edge of your seat as it concludes in a riotous blaze of F sharp major.

Le festin d’Esope completes the cycle of 12 Études dans tous les tons mineurs, Op 39, to which the Symphony and the huge Concerto for solo piano belong. The term ‘study’ should be taken to mean the same as it does to Chopin and a fortiori Clementi or Cramer. Alkan, more so even than Liszt, expands the scope of this form to the dimension of a symphonic poem, a rhapsody. Le festin d’Esope consists of a series of variations on a theme which one might liken to traditional Jewish melodies. The argument is to be found again in Jean de la Fontaine’s La vie d’Esope le Phrygien:

One market day, Xantus, who had decided to treat some of his friends, ordered him to buy the best and nothing but the best. The Phrygian said to himself, ‘I’m going to teach you to specify what you want, without leaving it all to the discretion of a slave’. And so he bought nothing but tongue, which he adapted to each different sauce; the starter, the main course, the dessert, everything was tongue. At first the guests praised his choice of dish; but by the end they were filled with disgust. ‘Did I not order you’, said Xantus, ‘to buy the best?’ ‘And what could be better than tongue?’ answered Aesop. ‘It is our connection to civil life, the key to the sciences, the organ of truth and reason. Through it, we build and police our towns; we learn; we persuade; we rule over assemblies; we fulfil the greatest of all our duties, namely to praise God.’

The theme of the tongue, the most important organ and function, is frequently mentioned in the Bible, Alkan’s favourite book. The variations, apart from dealing with various technical problems, illustrate without doubt every possible transformation that a theme could go through; in addition, one is presented with a succession of little tableaux of the animal kingdom, Alkan giving us several hints of this such as the marking abajante.